Growing Cyber Threats Challenging US Federal Agencies

The US federal agencies, facing the growing security threats on its cyber world, said that sophisticated and developed attack techniques were responsible for this menace.

The type of threats, point out the agencies, include spyware, spam and phishing that pose security risks to the federation's various information systems.

Security experts state that while spam eats up considerable resources, they are used to deliver other kinds of online attacks like from phishing and spyware. phishing could result in identity theft, leakage of user credentials, and dampening of trust. Spyware, on the other hand, could steal and transmit sensitive data, do unauthorized modifications and reduce system performance.

Meanwhile, the combination of various kinds of attacks to make more complicated and destructive ones result into additional risks that are hard to mitigate with existing security tools. Besides, scammers and other con artists keep on perfecting their campaigns to compromise users' private data that they subsequently use for identity theft.

Despite people knowing about these threats, a majority of the agencies are short of security and do not utilize the required programs on information security as per the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act. The programs comprise risk assessment performance, effective mitigating controls, security training provision, as well as fulfillment of the incidence response policies and procedures in taking care of the said threats.

Further, security specialists state that the departments that are responsible for the detection, assessment as well as response to Internet security attacks are the Department of Homeland Security and the Office Management and Budget. However, the government has not issued clear guidance to agencies regarding which attacks they must report, along with to whom and how they must report them. Therefore, the country needs to toughen the measures of security to lessen these incidences.

Recently, The New York State CPB (Consumer Protection Board) highlighted the increase of phishing campaigns at the NY held '2008 Top Consumer Frauds & Complaints Conference'. With such campaigns affecting businesses and consumers alike, the CPB's online services declare that phishing frauds formed a major complaint throughout 2008.